Eliot Spitzer explains his return

Disgraced former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is making the media rounds on Monday for his just-announced run for New York City comptroller, saying he is enthusiastic about the job in question and doesn’t currently have his sights set on higher office.

“The real goal is to win this office and perform as well as I can,” he said on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” when asked whether his real goal is to be mayor. Spitzer added, “I don’t worry about what’s down the road, I focus on what’s right ahead.”

Eliot Spitzer's career

Eliot Spitzer stops by POLITICO

Earlier Monday, Spitzer — who resigned from his office in 2008 after being linked to a prostitution scandal — said in a radio interview that he believes the public understands and can forgive.

“This is a land of second chances,” Spitzer told radio host Bill Press on Monday morning. “I think it is a land of forgiveness, and people in their natural goodness understand the fact that we err, we sin, we pay a price and hopefully continue.”

Spitzer said the bid, which he decided to mount this weekend, wasn’t just about redemption.

“I don’t want to be glib and say no, this has nothing to do with — I think anybody who’s been through what I have been through, sure you want redemption. I don’t think this is the best way to get it. Because if that’s what I want, then I don’t think this is the way, the path to it. But what I am seeking is service,” Spitzer said on “CBS This Morning” on Monday.

Host Norah O’Donnell also asked Spitzer if he simply picked comptroller because it looked like an easy race.

“This is a very tough race. This is going to be an office, if I’m lucky enough to win, where we can do so much,” Spitzer said, citing shareholder power, corporate governance, protecting pensions and investing city money. “I want to do to that office what I did to the attorney general’s office, re-envision it, reimagine it.”

Spitzer, who spent the day seeking signatures for a petition that would allow him to run for the position ahead of a Thursday deadline, described the scene as “mayhem.”

“It was mayhem, there was one moment I was down at Union Square gathering some petitions… I was surrounded by more members of the media than I’ve literally ever seen in one place,” he said on MSNBC. He added, “There must have been 150 cameras, reporters. I don’t know why they’re so interested. There are not many questions I haven’t answered in the past couple years. And I didn’t say anything terribly exciting or new today. Maybe I shouldn’t say that.”

He told a New York radio station that he wants to return to politics to show the public what he can do.

“Did I regret not being there every day? Absolutely. Do I want to come back to say to the public here’s what I can do? You bet,” Spitzer told WCBS in New York on Monday morning.

Spitzer also addressed his resignation after a prostitution scandal.

“I resigned because I thought it was the right thing to do. And as I’ve said, accountability matters, and I had stood for principled accountability as attorney general and hence when my errors were made evident, I said accountability demands of me that I resign, and I did so,” Spitzer said on WCBS.